Much of what we know seems to be something everybody else knows too. We share a language, and the words I’m using should be the same for others.

Or so we believe.

It’s when we start to inquire about the way others learn, others work, others live, that questions appear. When we learn about them, we suddenly realize that the way we understand a word can be very different from what others imagine.

Consider a word like cozy. What is the picture, feeling, or experience you align with cozy? Now, ask someone sitting next to you, for example. How do they describe cozy?

Now do the same with justice, freedom, right, responsibility, discipline, etc.

Eventually you might realize how that image you’ve had starts to shift once you start to explain it to someone else or once you hear what others have to say about it.

We think we know, and we do. But we rarely consider how well we know what we know.